Outer Banks (9 page)

A
ND THEN, FOR
the rest of my life, silence. Cold, stony silence. It would be a hard thing to bear.)

 

I
T WASN'T UNTIL
almost a full year later, a Sunday early in February of this year, that I again thought of writing about him. This is how it happened.

I was in the neighborhood, as they say in New Hampshire when you are within ten miles of a place, photographing birds in winter scenery at a state park not far from A.'s home, and as it was still early in the afternoon when I finished, I decided to stop by for a brief visit. I rarely visited him unannounced or uninvited, but for reasons too vague and smokily intuitive to go into here, I decided that this time it would be permitted and perhaps even welcomed.

When I arrived, I noticed immediately that he had parked his car in the driveway outside the garage, which was not his habit. At that time he was driving a pale green Chrysler. It was an airport limousine, an unusually long vehicle that he took considerable pride in being able to park wholly inside his garage. Swinging open the garage door, raising it like the curtain at a stage play and revealing the blunt green tail of an automobile that, like a dragon, seemed to go on forever, disappearing into the far, cavernous darkness of the converted barn, was an exquisite pleasure for him. As a matter of fact, on several occasions I myself, as the audience, had found the experience oddly satisfying and had broken spontaneously into applause.

But on this day the car was parked outside the garage, and the garage door was locked. I walked quickly around to the side door at the porch, knocked, and then called. That door, too, when I tried it, was locked. It was a cold, diamond-clear day, with about eight inches of dry, week-old snow on the ground, and there were hundreds of footprints in the snow, most of them probably A.'s. But fresh prints could not be distinguished from week-old ones. A narrow path had been tramped from the porch down to the fence in front of the house, and on the other side of the fence was a waist-high pyramid of the last week's garbage and trash,
most of it frozen solid. Across the snow-covered, bumpy fields in front and into the woods behind the house and on either side were numerous chains of footprints—but it was impossible to tell when in the previous week any of the chains had been laid down. Beyond the woods hunched the mountain, mute, seeming almost smug.

It wasn't so much that I couldn't understand A.'s absence as that I could not understand both his absence and the car's presence. Except under severe duress or drunkenness, he never rode in anyone else's vehicle. I knew he must still be on the premises. On the other hand, if he were just out for a walk in the woods, a normal activity on such a crisp, clear afternoon, why did he leave his car parked outside the garage? That was not normal. (Rather, it was not
usual.
Nothing about A. was normal.)

I decided to examine the car more closely. Perhaps there was a note, or a clue. After circling the enormous green Chrysler twice, I finally noticed the three holes in the front window on the driver's side, holes surrounded by interconnected cracks, like spider webs, holes that could have been made only by high-powered rifle bullets.

This was certainly a curious, if not ominous, development.

I called out his name several times, doubtless with fear in my voice and surely with urgency. No answer. Silence—except for the whisper of the cold wind riffling through the pines and the distant, harsh cries of a pair of crows from somewhere in the woods behind the house.

What could I do? I couldn't ask any of A.'s neighbors, those folks in the trailers and shacks back along the road, if they had seen him recently. The mere mention of his name and myself as a concerned friend would have invited any of those folks to slam his door in my face, or worse. Years of living in A.'s proximity had aroused in his neighbors a certain amount of anger. I couldn't call the police. To a stranger, especially to a law enforcement official, the circumstances simply weren't that ominous. The police chief,
A.'s brother-in-law, but no help for that, doubtless would have advised me to drop by again in a day or two, and if A. still hadn't moved his car, then perhaps an inquiry could begin. And though at this time his divorce from “Number Five,” as he called her, had been legally consummated, A. nevertheless was still living alone, so there was as yet no new spouse, no proper “next-of-kin” to alert and interrogate.

Feeling puzzled, helpless and, increasingly, alarmed, I got back into my car and started the long drive home to Northwood. I had not gone many miles when I imagined, successively, three separate events, or eventualities, which, successively, I believed true—that is, I believed in turn that each event sufficiently explained the peculiar circumstances surrounding A.'s absence.

 

Event
#1: U
PON
arriving at my home in Northwood, I built a fire in the library and was about to fix myself a cognac and soda when the phone rang. It was A. His voice was sharp, harsh, annoyed with me, as if he had been trying to reach me for several hours.

I tried to explain that I had spent most of the day photographing jays and chickadees in the snow and had stopped by his house on the way home, but he interrupted me, barking that he didn't give a damn where I'd been; he'd been arrested by his own brother-in-law, Chub Blount, and had been charged with the murder of Dora, his fifth wife. He told me that he'd been permitted one call, and he'd called me, and then, when I hadn't answered the phone, he'd decided I was probably in on the arrest somehow, so now he was calling to let me know what he thought of that kind of betrayal.

I was shocked. I assured him that I was shocked. “I didn't even know Dora was
dead,
for God's sake! And you know what I think of your brother-in-law,” I reminded him. “If I had known that Dora was dead, murdered, I mean, and if for whatever reason I had thought you were responsible, you
know
I'd never have called Chub in. I probably would have called the state police,
not
that
idiot,” I reassured him. “Assuming, of course, that I would've called anyone. I mean, what the hell, A., you know what I thought of Dora,” I said.

Apparently my words soothed him, as good sense inevitably did. Above all else, even in distress, A. was a reasonable man. In a calm voice now, he said that he wanted me to hire a lawyer for him.

“Did you do it? I mean, you know, kill her?” I asked. Perhaps he'd shot her with his 30.06 while she was sitting in his car—though I could not imagine any circumstance under which Dora might have ended up sitting in the driver's seat of A.'s Chrysler while he stood outside with his rifle. But I did want those bullet holes explained.

For several uncomfortable seconds A. snarled at me, literally snarled, like a bobcat or cougar interrupted at a meal. Then he shouted that he hadn't called me so he could confess to me, and he hadn't called to protest innocently that he was being framed by his brother-in-law. He'd called, first, to tell me what he thought of me if I had been a party to his arrest, and then to instruct me to hire a lawyer for him. Not a shyster, a
lawyer,
he bellowed. He figured it was a job that fitted my natural and acquired skills rather well. (A.'s sarcasm rarely failed to make a point, though often an obscure one.) As to whether or not he had in fact murdered his ex-wife, A. told me that if the lawyer I hired was able to convince a jury that he didn't do it, that would be the truth. If he failed, that would be the truth too, A. explained. That was why he wanted the best lawyer in the state of New Hampshire, he shouted. Did I understand?

“Yes, I understand. How do you think it happened, though? I mean, how do you think Dora was killed? How does Chub, the police, explain those bullet holes in the Chrysler?”

A. uttered a low, sneaky-sounding giggle, almost a cackle, except that he was genuinely amused. He was intrigued, he said, by my knowledge of those holes. Until now, until I had asked
about them, he himself had wondered who killed Dora. But now … and his voice drifted back into that low, sneaky giggle.

“Now, look, A., you don't think that
I
…”

He assured me that he thought nothing of the kind. Besides, he pointed out, it didn't matter
what
he thought,
who
he thought had killed her. All that mattered to him was getting his case presented to a jury by the best damned lawyer in New Hampshire, and if I could find him the best damned lawyer in New Hampshire, he'd forget all about my knowledge of the three bullet holes in the Chrysler.

I agreed to the terms. I had no choice. But who could such a marvelous attorney be? I wondered. In a backward state like New Hampshire, how could there be a barrister sufficiently gifted to create the kind of awful truth A. had defined? The task of locating and hiring such a person frightened me. I am an ordinary man. I felt alone, young, inadequate.

 

Event
#2: I departed from A.'s house, driving carefully along the rutted, rock-snared path to the main road, where I turned left, and in a moment I was beyond A.'s property and was passing the battered house trailers, tarpaper-covered shanties, and those all but deserted farmhouses. Then there was a stretch of road where for about a half-mile there were no dwellings and the dark spruce and Scotch pine woods came scruffily up to the edge of the road, darkening it, creating the effect of a shaggy tunnel or a narrow pass through a range of craggy mountains. As I entered this stretch of road, I saw a young woman standing by the side and was about to pass her when I realized who she was and what she was carrying in her arms.

It was Rochelle, A.'s twenty-six-year-old daughter, his only child and at that the child of his own late childhood. A lovely red-haired girl with long thin arms and legs, dressed in a forest green wool parka, hatless, with the hood laid back beneath her dark, tumbling, red river of hair—she was a startling figure to
behold, especially when she was the last person in the world one expected to see out here, and even more especially when one realized that she was carrying a rifle, which, because of the telescopic sight attached to it, I instantly recognized as A.'s own Winchester 30.06. She had the rifle cradled under her right arm and across the front of her flat belly, with her left hand gripping the bolt as if she had just fired off a round, or was about to. She seemed distraught, shaking, green eyes darting wildly, roughly, and in the direction of the woods on the left side of the road. She did not seem to notice my car as I slowed, crossed over, and stopped beside her.

Leaning out the open window so she could recognize me, I cried, “
Rochelle!
What's the matter? What are you doing out here?”

“I'll
kill
him!” she screamed into the woods, as if I were located in that darkness rather than behind her in my car. “I'll
kill
the bastard! I'll
kill
him!”

“Where is he?”

“In there someplace,” she said in a hoarse voice, as if she had been screaming for hours and had exhausted all her vocal resources but the roar. All she had left was her maximum effort; anything less collapsed of its own weight. “I know he's in there,” she croaked, motioning toward the woods with the tip of the barrel. “I think I hit him once, maybe twice, at the house when he drove up. When I chased him down here, I could see he was bleeding, his face was bleeding, all over his lousy face, the bastard!”

Her own face was gathered up like a fist, her green eyes agate-hard. Her fine, even teeth were clenched, and the muscles of her long jaw worked ferociously in and out. Her delicately freckled hands had turned chalk white from the force of her grip on the rifle.

Though she had acknowledged my question by shouting her answer into the woods, she had not acknowledged my presence yet and continued to stare searchingly into the tangled darkness.
With extreme care, moving slowly yet smoothly and, I hoped, gently, I got out of my car. She seemed not to notice so I took a single step toward her; then she wheeled about on her heels and swung the gun up, slapped the butt against her right shoulder, and pointed the tip at my heart. She sighted down the barrel with care, focusing the telescope with her left hand as if she were tuning in a distant radio station.

“
Don't!
” she ordered.

I froze, one foot held delicately off the ground, both hands palm down and off to my sides, as if quieting an orchestra. “Rochelle,” I said in a calm voice, “give me the gun. C'mon, honey, let me have the gun now, you don't want to kill your dad. I know you're mad at him, I know he's upset you, but you don't want to
kill
him for it, now do you, honey? C'mon, honey, let your ol' buddy have the gun, then we can sit down and talk about it.” I had slowly let my foot descend to the ground and had taken a second step.

I was terrified—the sight of one of the most stable creatures I had ever known, one of the most admirably predictable and rational women I had ever met, standing wild-eyed before me with a high-powered rifle zeroed in on my thundering heart, so upset my notion of the real and expected world that anything could have happened, anything, and it would have seemed appropriate. Rochelle could have broken into a Cole Porter song and started tap-dancing her way down the road, using the rifle as a cane, waving over her shoulder at me as she pranced out of sight, the end of a musical comedy based on the exciting life of a girl revolutionary. Or she could have suddenly opened her mouth wide, as if to eat a pear, and shoving the tip of the barrel in, jammed her thumb against the trigger and blown the top of her lovely head away. Or she could have simply squeezed one finger, nothing more than that, just wrinkled her trigger finger one-sixteenth of an inch, and I would have heard the explosion, possibly would have smelled the fire and smoke, seen a shred of
the narrow belt of the blue sky fall into my face as I was blown back against the side of my car, my chest an erupting volcano for no more than a split second, and then Nothing, unimaginable Nothing.